2.Neue Liebe, neues Leben

Like the Eight Songs of Opus 52, those of Opus 75 were neither composed at the same time nor intended to form a set. Unlike the earlier publication, however, the songs of Opus 75 are clearly the work of the mature Beethoven. Dedicated to Princess Caroline Kinsky, the six songs were published simultaneously in Leipzig and London in October 1810 by Breitkopf und Härtel.

The second song of the set, Goethe's "Neue Liebe, neues Leben," had been sketched in 1792, completed in 1799, and printed by Simrock in 1808 as WoO 127. Beethoven revised it for publication as part of op. 75, and in so doing created one of his most advanced through-composed art songs (the only through-composed song in Op. 75).

Goethe's poem describes a man in whom new life has been awakened by new love. His heart does not behave as it used to, and when he tries to free it from the bonds of love he only wishes to return to the bondage. As the poem closes, the narrator complains that the girl holds him "against his will," and he begs to be set free from love.

Beethoven's experience with sonata form in the instrumental realm informs his structure of "Neue Liebe, neues Leben." After the second strophe, a linking passage leads to a return of both text and music of the first two strophes, but this time with a different modulation. Beethoven may have been tempted to do this by the last line of the second strophe, "Ach! mein Weg zu ihr zurück" ("Ah! my was back to her"), suggesting that the narrator will be eternally in a state of vacillation. Beethoven's separation of the last line of the first strophe, "Ach wie kamst du nur dazu?" ("Ah! how did you [my heart] come to this?") from the preceding text with a piano interlude underlines the text, giving it greater weight. A new link introduces the third strophe, with new text and music that culminates in an unexpectedly forceful ending.



© All Music Guide

3.Aus Goethes Faust (Mephistos Flohlied)

Es war einmal ein König (There Once Was a King), for voice or men's unison chorus and piano, is the third of six songs in Beethoven's Op. 75. Also known by the more general title Aus Goethes Faust (from Goethe's "Faust"), and also as the "Song of the Flea," it is one of three settings of Goethe in the set (presented alongside two poems by Christian Ludwig Reissig and one by Gerhard Anton von Halem), which Beethoven completed in 1809 for publication the following year. Beethoven is thought to have begun work on the Goethe settings well before that; however, the song under consideration here perhaps dates to as early as 1792.

The text excerpted from Goethe's masterpiece for use in this setting is taken from a farcical ballad sung by Mephisto. It describes a king who takes an unusual and magnanimous liking to a lowly flea. "He loved it," Goethe says, "like a son." So absurdly deep is his affection that he prohibits everyone in the court from swatting at the nibbling pest—or even at his fellow fleas. The king has a tiny but glamorous suit tailored for his little friend, and even appoints him and his fellow fleas to positions of nobility.

Beethoven brilliantly sets this ludicrous scenario. A quick little neighbor note figure in the upper range of the piano, with occasional leaps downward, paints the flea in obvious pictorial strokes. Beethoven's sly humor, however, emerges in the king's parts, which he plays with a face so straight as to lapse into caricature. The king's regal lines, and the gravity with which he makes pronouncements (ordering flea-sized trousers, for example), lend a silly pomposity to the verses, which are separated by the flitting figurations of His Majesty's favored parasite. Modal shifts create further comical effect, as in the sudden emergence, in the passages describing the fleas' elevation to the court, of major tonic chords from the predominant minor mode. The faux-seriousness begins to unravel near the end of the piece, partly due to the phonetic acrobatics with which Goethe concludes his poem: while the courtiers had to suffer the itchy pests without protests, Mephisto observes, "Wir knicken und ersticken/Doch gleich, wenn einer sticht" (We smack and smash the ones that bite us); repeating this unwieldy text faster and faster, Beethoven's regal textures and nimble figures collapse into clumsy clusters of dissonant chords.

© All Music Guide